Japan landslides kill 36

Rain-sodden hillsides collapsed in torrents of mud, rock and debris Wednesday on the outskirts of Hiroshima, killing at least 36 people and leaving seven others missing, the prefectural police said.

Public broadcaster NHK showed rescue workers suspended by ropes from police helicopters pulling victims from the rubble. Others gingerly climbed through windows to search for survivors in crushed homes.

Hillsides caved in or were swept down into residential areas in at least five valleys in the suburbs of Hiroshima, in western Japan, after heavy rains left slopes unstable.

In addition to the dead and missing as of Wednesday night, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said 15 people were injured, two seriously.

"A few people were washed away, and it is hard to know exactly how many are unaccounted for," said local government official Nakatoshi Okamoto, noting that conditions in the area were hindering rescuers.

Authorities issued warnings that additional rain could trigger more landslides and flooding.

The land collapsed so quickly that evacuation advisories came an hour after the first mudslide, officials acknowledged.

"It's so regrettable," Kyodo News service quoted Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui as saying. "We'll find out what went wrong and take the necessary measures."

Landslides are a constant risk in mountainous, crowded Japan, where many homes are built on or near steep slopes. Torrential rains in the early morning apparently caused hillsides to collapse in an area where many of the buildings were newly constructed.

Damage from landslides and mudslides has increased over the past few decades because of more frequent heavy rains, despite extensive work on stabilizing slopes. In the past decade there have been nearly 1,200 landslides a year, according to the Land Ministry, up from an average of about 770 a year in the previous decade.

In October 2013, multiple mudslides on Izu-Oshima, an island south of Tokyo, killed 35 people, four of whose bodies were never recovered. Those slides followed a typhoon that dumped a record of more than 32 inches of rain in a single day.

The Associated Press